I’m learning how to use a new device, getting used to the touch and the different sort of storage process. One more step into the rapidly advancing digital age. This “book” is so light and thin it certainly doesn’t feel like a computer, and according to the salesperson, is more of an online streaming device. Everything is stored “in the cloud” rather than on the machine. Not quite sure what that will mean when I want to return to a document created and stored?
Well, I guess I’m finding out that it remains available somehow, because I’ve just opened it up again several days later, in a different physical location but one that has otherwise said I don’t have Internet access. So… I can write anywhere, which is what I was looking for (smile).
I rarely experience what I am in the midst of now – a waiting time gap between two appointments, not long enough to head home and back into town, rather long to fill by sitting over a beverage in a restaurant or coffee shop. There are a few places in town where it is acceptable to sit and write, and I’ve found one now to pass the remaining hour of my gap. I would probably not be so aware of this odd hole in my day under slightly different circumstances. If I had my cell phone with me, there would be newsletters to read, mail to check, even solitaire games to play. But my phone is with my husband, because his has crashed. We’re waiting for a new one to arrive. I have an old style slider phone given me by my employer, useful for being reached by clients, and to stay in touch with my husband, but lacking all the services of my usual cell phone menu.
Another piece of equipment that recently crashed is the portable, 800 hours on two AA batteries AlphaSmart writer that I’ve carried around with me for many years. I will replace it soon; meanwhile this new Chromebook is the only tool available to me. As I get to know the Chromebook better, and also to know where around town it can find the Internet, I’m hopeful I’ll find it satisfactory. Just now, I’m still adapting to the fact that it doesn’t have a delete key, nor the tabs at the top and bottom of the scroll bar I’m accustomed to using to move the page up or down.
Not so very long ago, I complained that makers of copy machines and of computer printers seemed united in their determination to frustrate users, with each machine requiring paper to be placed just a little bit differently, or fed in ever so slightly differently, to get a good quality well centered printed page output. The same sorts of differences, and some not so small ones, clearly pertain between operating systems. I get it that later arrivals believe they need to tweak the process to make themselves somehow distinct, but must they also fail to provide easily accessible explanations of how they differ? Yes, I’m being cranky. I’m entitled. I grew up using printed manuals to understand how to use machines. Now if I ask about such a thing I’m looked at askance, as if I’d asked for a free key to the bank vault and unfettered access to all of that vault’s contents.
Mostly I get impatient with myself, feeling blocked from accomplishing what I’m used to doing with my writing, because of “technical difficulties.” This will pass, I know, and before long there will be one more system I can comfortably use. It’s said when you stop learning is when you start dying. So long as computer technology continues being tweaked, and I have to keep learning new systems, I guess I can be assured that I’m very much alive!
1eclecticwriter 